Or will Parliament heed its Clerk?

An interesting piece in the Guardian reports the evidence given by Malcolm Jack, Clerk of the House of Commons, to the Political & Constitutional Reform Committee. He has warned that the plan to introduce five-year Fixed-Term Parliaments (part of the Coalition Agreement) could force the courts to make judgements on “matters of acute political controversy, such as whether an election should be held”.

The Clerk also attacked the failure to draft the legislation in advance, or indeed to consult him about it (which seems remarkable). Labour’s Jack Straw has attacked the proposals, but the Cabinet Office is insisting that the Courts would not interfere in Parliamentary proceedings (although the whole area of Parliamentary privilege is also to be reviewed in a separate major planned bill). It is unclear whether the assumed reluctance of the British courts would similarly deter European Courts from entertaining petitions relating to the Speaker.

It seems unlikely that this bill will be thwarted, however ill-though-out some of its provisions may prove to be - however, there may still be room for significant change in the committee stage. Without the determined opposition of the Labour party (and a healthy swathe of Conservative rebels) I would be very surprised if the idea of fixed-term parliaments was not passed in some form in the next year or so. If that’s the case, then unless the Coalition falls apart in the next 16 months, the next General Election will be in 2015.

You can currently get 7/4 with Ladbrokes and 13/8 with Paddy Power on a 2015 (or later) General Election. Assuming a second GE in 2010 is unlikely (currently 20/1 with Ladbrokes), then a covering bet (at 4/1) on a 2011 General Election could make 7/4 quite an attractive price.

Of course, fixed-term Parliament doesn’t guarantee that there won’t be a General Election in 2012/13/14, but I think it would make it much less likely that the 5/1 available on each at the moment. If they are too meanly priced, then it suggests a little value elsewhere - but is it worth waiting 5 years to collect?

Morus
Mike Smithson is almost back from France, no thanks to the French trade unions

Who will follow Hague, and when?

Paddy Power have recently put up a new market on who will be the next permanent Foreign Secretary after William Hague. Though the story surrounding his hiring of Christopher Myers has largely died down, Fraser Nelson (Spectator editor writing for the NotW) has hinted that the personal cost of making the statement he released might cause him to step away from front line politics in the near future anyway.

Nelson’s article is worth a read in full, but the key points are firstly that Hague’s presence is important for Cameron and the coalition (“Hague not only adds heft, but reassures the Tory mainstream that the Coalition is OK”) and that he would be tricky to replace (“Hague would need to be replaced by a right-winger. Liam Fox or Iain Duncan Smith would NOT want to move. It would be destabilising”)

I’m not sure I share Nelson’s certainty that it must be a right-winger, though the balance of the Cabinet as a whole is important. Let’s take a look at the candidates and the odds from the Irish bookmaker:

Liam Fox 5/2
Michael Gove 4/1
Theresa May 8/1
Caroline Spelman 9/1
Philip Hammond, Danny Alexander, Andrew Lansley 10/1
George Osborne 12/1
Andrew Mitchell 16/1
Iain Duncan Smith 18/1
Eric Pickles 20/1
Lord Strathclyde 22/1
Owen Patterson 25/1
Cheryl Gillian 25/1
Ken Clarke 33/1

Of these, most are incredibly unlikely candidates for Foreign Secretary. Nick Clegg, though well qualified (speaks several languages, former MEP etc) is oddly not listed. I strongly suspect that it would not be any Lib Dem, unless Clegg were to take on the FCO whilst remaining Deputy PM. Promoting another LibDem into the very top tier would unbalance the Coalition, and undermine Clegg’s seniority within his party - unless it were Paddy Ashdown. If not a LD leader (past or present), it must be a Conservative. That rules out Danny Alexander (and Huhne and Cable, or Laws, obviously).

Some would almost certainly not want to leave their current jobs. IDS certainly, Andrews Mitchell and Lansley enjoy ringfenced budgets at present, and Owen Patterson is hardly likely to be called away from Northern Ireland given the recent flare-ups. Moving Theresa May makes no sense (no-one else would want the Home Office), and I cannot see either Spelman or Gillian making the jump from DEFRA or Wales respectively. Pickles would get the job on the basis of performance to date, but his pugilistic progress at DCLG seems a better fit for him than the niceties of diplomacy. Lord Strathclyde would have been possible, though I suspect his involvement with Trafigura would make the Foreign Office the wrong promotion for him. Ken Clarke would no doubt be an interesting choice, but I suspect the Tory Right would have a real problem with a Conservative Europhile in that job.

That leaves Fox, Gove, Osborne, and Hammond listed. If the economy was not a major issue, then Osborne would be the clear favourite (probably moving Hammond - a former Shadow Chief Sec - to the Exchequer). But with the economic future still uncertain, I cannot see Osborne being moved. Fox would tick Nelson’s box, as the leading right-winger, but would Cameron promote him to the FCO? And would he want to leave the MoD? Fox was a leadership contender last time, and elevating him further would more likely embolden the Tory Right than passify them. A Fox elevation would create a vacancy at Defence, which again returns us to the possibility of Ashdown in the Cabinet (he was rumoured to have been offered the job in May).

So Gove or Hammond? Gove has been the most-disappointing performer in some ways, but that perhaps simply reflects the degree of expectation (he was the best performing Shadow) and the determined efforts made by Ed Balls in opposing him. He might want to leave the Education battles behind, and although not a classic right-winger in many senses, his foreign policy positions have always sounded quite hawkish (on Iraq in particular). Hammond would also be an interesting choice - previous work at the World Bank and a consultancy position with the Government of Malawi for two years. His promotions to the front bench were under IDS and Howard, and transport is one area where little major policy has been launched.

There are three major names missing from this market: Francis Maude, Oliver Letwin, and David Davies. Maude strikes me as being very happy as the “Cardinal Richelieu” of the Coalition, wielding far more influence than is written about in the press. Oliver Letwin might have been nicknamed “Oliver Leftwing” by Kelvin McKenzie, but he is very fiscally conservative and an unabashed Euroskeptic, not to mention having been a Shadow Home Secretary under IDS and Shadow Chancellor under Michael Howard. Then there is David Davies - I suspect he would not be rewarded with a job as senior as this, either for his remarkable departure from the front benches last time, or for agitating on the backbenches now. However, were someone like Gove promoted into one of the Big Four jobs, I could see the return of Davies to another job in the Cabinet reassuring some of the Tory Right.

Obviously all of this is speculative, although William Hague will eventually retire, and this careful balancing act will have to be reorganised somehow. The longer the wait, the better chance of someone currently junior having grown in stature - if anyone gets a long-shot candidate added to the market, please let us know. For now, I’d call Gove the favourite, and Hammond the value bet. If Letwin was added at better than 12/1 I might be interested too. Clegg to combine FCO and DPM should be worth at least 8/1 in my view.

Of course, Fraser Nelson’s criteria demand someone liked by the Tory Right, a Euroskeptic, an internationalist (maybe born abroad, or fluent in foreign languages), experienced in high office, not part of the Cameron-clique, but probably not Liam Fox or IDS. In return for agreeing not to run against his leader, wouldn’t Fraser Nelson’s predecessor-but-one at the Spectator be rather a good fit?

Morus
Mike Smithson is away

It’s 38/34/18

The first non-YouGov poll for three weeks has a boost for the LDs and is showing a share very different from the online pollster’s recent daily polls.

According to ComRes, the yellows are now on 18 per cent, up three points on the last survey from the firm. The Tories, on 38 per cent, are down one point while Labour, on 34 per cent, is up one.

There are signs that men are more opposed than women to the Liberal Democrats’ decision to join forces with the Tories. ComRes found that only 15 per cent of men would vote Liberal Democrat in a general election today, compared to 21 per cent of women. Tory support is also unevenly split between the sexes; 41 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women would now vote for David Cameron’s party.

The ComRes 18% share for the yellows is the same as ICM found in August. Both ICM and ComRes carry out their surveys by phone and use past vote weighting.

The 18% is well below the 23.6% that Clegg’s party got on May 6th but it is a lot better than the 11% that YouGov had in one survey last week.

UPDATE: Tonight’s YouGov/Sun Voting Intention has CON 42%: LAB 37%: LD 13% - so a very different picture from the online firm that restricts it samples to members of its polling panel and does not, like ComRes, weight by past vote.

And either way, will it win him votes?

One of the interesting developments in the Labour leadership race is the extent to which Ed Miliband is marketing himself as the ‘change’ candidate. The word is all over his campaign website. The BBC is reporting a YouGov poll publicised by his campaign team in which 72% of people considering voting Labour would be less likely to do so if the new leader continues to tread the New Labour path (curiously, there seems to be no mention of this poll on either the YouGov or Ed Miliband websites, which means it’s not possible to see the exact wording of the questions and those publicised could be cherry-picked for effect).

It all looks like a very obvious attempt to move away from the Blair-Brown years in contrast to the advice of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, and also the more continuity agenda of his brother.

Two key questions are whether he’s right and whether it’s a leadership election ploy or one for the long term. Before that though is the question of whether New Labour was ever really necessary in the first place.

Blair and Mandelson are of course convinced that the measures taken post-1994 were critical to Labour’s success and they’re probably right in that they contributed to the scale of the victory and the breadth of Labour’s coalition in 1997. However, given the travails of the Tories in the 1992-7 parliament, was it really necessary to move so far from Labour’s traditional roots? Some modernisation and acceptance of a new status quo was clearly necessary; the question is one of degree.

There is a false logic going on here that runs: we took these measures, we won this election, therefore taking these measures is necessary to winning elections. In fact, even if it was right at the time, there is no reason to assume they are necessary or sufficient to win any election. Times change, opponents change and the country and electorate changes.

In the short term, what really matters is how his arguments and those of other influential commentators play with the Labour leadership electorate, not just in terms of first preferences but also in the lower preferences of the also-ran candidates, for even if David Miliband gains most first preferences, Ed could still win through should he pick up a disproportionate number of transfers (which as an aside, would highlight the nature of AV elections).

As the three most likely to exit before the final round all look to be running on a more ‘left-wing’ tax-and-spend, or in Balls’ case, borrow-and-spend, manifestos (a crude description but not inaccurate), it’s perhaps not unreasonable to assume that the final candidate closer to them should do better. That’s presumably what Ed Miliband is hoping anyway.

David Herdson

Mike Smithson is on holiday for another few days